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Date:      Tue, 5 Nov 2013 19:43:46 +1100
From:      Hilton Day <hilton.day@gmail.com>
To:        freebsd-xen@freebsd.org
Subject:   Paravirt domU and PCI Passthrough
Message-ID:  <CABomu8P88ZfJvO7sPd9-L6Thcaoxj7WgjUKuud3VU40D6h1C9w@mail.gmail.com>

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Hi - firstly a warning.  While I've been running Xen on Linux for about 6
years, I've only just started to scratch the surface of freeBSD.

I just compiled a (working) paravirt kernel for freeBSD 8.3 (actually for
pfSense firewall), and have succeeded in running it with a couple of
virtual interfaces.  However, I've struck a couple of limitations:

1.  Seems to be no support for the Xen pcifront to enable pci passthrough
to paravirt domUs?
2.  SMP support seems to be broken - I get a kernel panic with more than
one core for the VM.

I've had a look and can't find anything like the Linux kernel option
for CONFIG_XEN_PCIDEV_FRONTEND
to enable pci support in paravirt? (but this could be lack of familiarity
with freeBSD build process/tree/files).

I've succeessfully passed thorugh the same NIC to freeBSD Xen HVM domUs
(running 8.3 and 9.1), but would prefer to get a fully paravirt instance up
and running.

Is PCI Passthrough possible with a freeBSD paravirt domU?  I just set up a
freeBSD 10 BETA2 environment and have kicked off the build process with:

> make buildkernel KERNCONF=XEN

I'm just wondering whether I'm chasing a dead end and should just settle
for a XEN HVM solution?

Thanks for any advice,

Hilton.



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